Death Toll Rises To 20 From Russian Missile Strike On Apartment Bloc In Ukrainian City Of Dnipro.

A woman weeps as emergency personnel work to rescue victims after an apartment block was heavily damaged by a Russian missile strike in Dnipro on January 15.

The death toll from a Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro has risen to 40, the national emergencies service said on January 16.

Dnipro’s municipal council also said 75 people had been injured in the strike in the city, just one of several Ukrainian cities targeted by Russian missiles -- but by far the deadliest attack -- on January 14.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians . For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here .

"The search-and-rescue operation in the Dnipro has been continuing for almost 40 hours," Valentyn Reznichenko, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, said on January 16.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy spoke directly to the Russian people in his nightly video address: "Your cowardly silence, your attempt to 'wait out' what is happening, will end only with the fact that one day these same terrorists will come for you," he said, speaking in Russian.

Earlier, the city council declared three days of mourning for what it described as the worst "terrorist attack on Dnipro" since the launch of Russia’s full invasion last February.

Rescuers used a crane to try to evacuate people trapped in the apartment building's upper stories, some of whom were signaling with the flashlights on their mobile phones, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, said on Telegram on January 14. He also said more people were likely buried under the rubble.

The Ukrainian military has said it believes the nine-story structure was hit by a long-range Kh-22 missile. As a result of the strike, the entire entrance of the building, in which more than 1,100 people lived, collapsed.

Russia carried out three air raids, 57 missile attacks, and 69 attacks from heavy weapon rocket salvo systems on January 14, Ukraine’s military command reported on January 15.

Dnipro was just one of several Ukrainian cities targeted by Russian missiles on January 14 in the first major barrage in days.

Infrastructure facilities were also hit in the western Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, in the Odesa region on the Black Sea, and in northeastern Kharkiv. Kyiv, the capital, was also targeted.

According to Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat, Russia attacked Kyiv with ballistic missiles flying from the north.

WATCH: Firefighters continued to clear the rubble and extricate survivors in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on January 15, a day after a Russian missile strike hit a nine-story apartment building.

"The ballistics are not easy for us to detect and shoot down," he told local media.

The warning about the missile threat was late because of the lack of radar data and information from other sources, he said.

An infrastructure target was hit in the morning missile attack, according to Tymoshenko.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said explosions were reported in the city's eastern residential Dniprovskiy district and that parts of a missile had crashed in an uninhabited part of the Holosiyivskiy district. Klitschko said no casualties had been reported and a fire at a nonresidential building in Holosiyivskiy had been extinguished.

The armed forces' commander in chief, General Valery Zaluzhniy, said Russia fired 33 cruise missiles overall on January 14 and that 21 were shot down by Ukrainian air-defense systems.

Meanwhile, uncertainty continued over which side controlled the strategic city of Soledar, which has been shelled into mostly ruins by Russian forces.
In comments broadcast on January 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed victories by his troops in Soledar, saying: "There is a positive dynamic [in the fighting]. Everything is developing according to plan." The Ukrainian military has denied Russian claims of capturing Soledar but acknowledged that heavy fighting continues in and around the city.

The latest Russian missile strikes came as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced Britain would provide tanks and artillery systems to Ukraine.

Sunak made the pledge to provide Challenger 2 tanks and other artillery systems after speaking to Zelenskiy on January 14, the British leader's Downing Street office said in a statement.

Zelenskiy tweeted his thanks to Sunak "for the decisions that will not only strengthen us on the battlefield, but also send the right signal to other partners."

Russia slammed Sunak’s announcement. The Russian Embassy in London said on Twitter that it would "intensify combat operations."

British Defense Ministry officials have said an official announcement to send up to 12 main battle tanks to Ukraine will be announced at a meeting of Ukrainian donor countries in Germany on January 20.

Reports citing British government sources said four Challenger 2 tanks will be sent immediately, with another eight to follow shortly.

Ukraine has received hundreds of modernized versions of the Soviet-era T-72 tank from European and NATO allies like the Czech Republic and Poland since Russia's unprovoked invasion 11 months ago. But Kyiv has received nothing comparable to Britain’s Challenger 2 or Germany's Leopard 2 tanks, another weapon Ukraine has requested.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a German newspaper, Handelsblatt, on January 15 that Ukraine can expect more deliveries of heavy weapons from Western countries.

"Recent pledges for heavy warfare equipment are important -- and I expect more in the near future," he said.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP